A Snowman on the Rampage

A story suggested by the length and Damoclesian implications of the icicles outside. It transpires in New England. A nod likewise to Calvin and Hobbes.

***

For five weeks the snow had covered the ground and grown to the height where the house's foundation met the weatherboarding.

Leafless beeches, elms, and ash trees grew in the forest round about, and if snow had not been caught in the broad mesh of the wire fence the territory belonging to the house would have seemed to go on forever.

Though the clouds were thick with snow and the air was hazy where the powdery flakes fell like cherry blossoms out of season, the sky was as dark as if it had been clear.

There was a quiet traffic in birds, owls, rabbits, mice, and greater predators.

The movement behind the trunk of the only locust tree was as furtive but very different.

It came from a rounded figure, whose head and spherical shoulder blotted out the background for an instant before melding back into the trunk's shadow.

A strange depression sank into the ground beside the tree, and a strange marking of white was left on the locust bark as a twigged hand slithered, scratchingly, across it.

It was the snowbeast.

*

One twigged hand still bore the scrapings of the tree bark, the other emerged, uplifted, not with a carrot, but with a colourless arm of a like shape.

That arm was an icicle.

It did not drip; it had not cracked; it was not ribbed with the marks of the twig.

In the residual light of the benighted countryside, it reflected an eerie whitish glow and a fleeting watery dissolution.

*

Closer the snowbeast came.

The water-darkened rock which served as its nose twitched.

Two half-rotted beechnut hulls which served as its eyes bristled.

Its mouth, a moribund locust bean, turned upside down.

The twigs were raised; the icicle fell.


*

A lantern sprang apart with a shattering clutter.

The bulb extinguished.

The rays on the snow vanished with the silhouettes of the trees.

A rabbit at the fenceline hobbled away in affright.

The owl hooted and left an elm with a virulent flap.

*

The icicle stabbed and stabbed at the windowpane.

It was double-glazed.

The snowbeast advanced to the door.

The fanlight was single-glazed.

Stab and crash.

*

A great shard of grass settled in the snowbeast's midsection.

Meltwater gurgled up through the snow-wound and dissolved the creature as it thrashed in violent throes.

A bird twittered.

*

In the morning the owner stepped outside to sweep up the glass.

His wife called, "Do phone the insurance people, dear."

FINIS.

Dec. 27, 2010

[It's a dumb story, but maybe amusing. The original title is "Rime of the Snowbeast."]